


The New Boy

by MrProphet



Category: Midsomer Murders - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 11:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10696542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	The New Boy

DS Tom Barnaby leaned wearily against the bar.

“Orange juice?” the barmaid asked, “or are you off duty now?”

“I’ll have… whatever you recommend,” he decided. “Since I don’t seem to know anything anymore.”

“I thought you had the look,” she told him, pouring a glass of ale. “Try this, Sergeant Barnaby.”

“Tom,” he told her. He took a sip, and then a long draught of the dark ale. “Mm. That’s very good…”

“Joyce,” she said with a brilliant smile. “Joyce Midsomer.”

“Old family?”

“One of the oldest,” she assured him. “Now, what’s your trouble. Case getting to you?”

“I shouldn’t…”

Joyce smiled at him. “Trust me,” she said. “If you’ve got the look – and you have – you won’t solve this without local knowledge.”

“I think DCI Harp was on to something,” Barnaby admitted, “but now he’s in a coma. Knocked down the stairs and savaged by his own dog.” He laid Harp’s notebook on the bar and rummed at it with his fingers.

“Why did the dog attack him?” Joyce asked.

“The vet said it looked as though the animal had been half-starved,” Barnaby explained, “but the Guv’nor cared more about the dog than he did about most of his family. It doesn’t seem right.”

“Any clues?”

Barnaby shrugged. “A bent piece of metal, about six feet long,” he said. “If you can call that a clue.”

“What about the rest?” Joyce asked.

“Well, the first victim was Mrs Roberta Wickes-Tyson.”

“Our grand dame of the stage,” Joyce noted. “Director – and copyright holder – of the annual pantomime.”

“Copyright?” Barnaby was intrigued.

“Yes; her great-grandfather wrote the script and the music. There’s about seven years left to run, I think, but until then only Great Wraxham puts on that particular pantomime each year.”

“Always assuming they manage to keep enough of their cast and crew to do so,” Barnaby added. “They lost half-a-dozen straight away after Mrs Wickes-Tyson was poisoned on set.”

“Where was the poison?” Joyce asked in a whisper.

“In her mulled wine,” Barnaby replied in the same tone.

“Ah, the famous mulled wine,” Joyce mused. “Mixed before the rehearsal, heated to exactly sixty-eight degrees and then allowed to cool.”

“And therein lies our problem. The wine and spices were always mixed and heated by the same man; Simon Mullion, the musical director.”

“Soppy Simon, we used to call him at school,” Joyce laughed. “Not that he’s so soppy now.”

“Quite a hit with the ladies, indeed,” Barnaby agreed. “Including, but not limited to, his occasional fiancée, ffiona Wickes-Tyson, who stands to inherit a significant amount from Mrs Wickes-Tyson, her aunt, which gives us a motive. Unfortunately, everyone knew about the wine. They knew that Simon mixed it every day before the rehearsal, and they knew that it would be standing untouched until Mrs Wickes-Tyson had worked through at least three scenes.”

“So, anyone could have poisoned it?”

Barnaby nodded. “Besides which, not long after the death, Simon Mullion broke off his engagement to ffiona Wickes-Tyson anyway.”

“He’s a fast mover. He was in here earlier with Eddie Greenacre,” Joyce noted. “Are you still calling Mr Tyson’s car crash suspicious?” she asked.

“Oh, definitely. You see…” He leaned conspiratorially across the bar. “It’s  _wasn’t_  a car crash. He went out to the car park to drive home at the end of the evening’s rehearsal and a tree fell on top of his car.”

“A whole tree?” Joyce asked.

“Well, most of one. And the thing is, no-one even knows what he was doing there. He’s the set designer and the sets have been finished for weeks. He didn’t have any reason to be there.”

“Oh yes he did,” Joyce assured Barnaby. “Daisy.”

“Daisy? The… pantomime cow. Oh, please tell me she isn’t involved; I don’t think I could stand it.”

*

_Two days earlier_

“Just recap will you, Sergeant Barnaby?” Harp asked.

“Yes, sir,” Barnaby sighed. “So, you are… Daisy the Cow.”

The cow struck her hoof once on the dressing room floor making a single, clear clop.

“And until the performance is over, you prefer not to remove the costume in public.”

One clop.

“Indeed, you refuse to take off the cow suit unless we make a formal charge?”

Clop.

*

“Well, that’s what I call dedication to the craft,” Joyce laughed.

“Oh, it got worse!”

*

“Alright, ‘Daisy’,” Barnaby said. “I think that’s all for now. Could you ask Miss Bennedetti to come in, please.”

Clop. Clop.

“I’m sorry;  _Ms_  Bennedetti.”

Clop. Clop.

“And… why not?”

Daisy hung her head disconsolately.

“Sergeant Barnaby!” DCI Harp sounded appalled.

“I’m sorry, Daisy,” Barnaby said wearily. “Would you like to do your little dance before you go.”

Clop.

*

Joyce fought not to burst out laughing. “And was it a good dance?” she asked.

“It was… disturbing,” he replied. “I don’t think children should be exposed to cows dancing like that.”

“Maybe not,” Joyce agreed, “but inside that cow are a pair of twins; twenty-one, red-haired and… of low reputation. Carter Tyson has been sniffing around after those two since his wife died and he came to leech off his sister-in-law. Their father threatened to…”

“Oh yes? And their father is…?”

Joyce was reluctant but said: “He’s the woodsman and gamekeeper for the Wickes’. Manages the estate… cuts back trees. But look, there’s more to this than jealousy,” she insisted.

“I’m not sure about that,” Barnaby told her. “There seemed to be nothing but jealousy at that pantomime. Between the celebrated star of stage and screen, Ms Alessandra Bennedetti flying into hissing spats at the mere mention of her principle boy, Miss Eddie Greenacre, and the way the giant and giantess – Mr and Mrs Wickes-Todd – carped on about the Tysons ‘doing us out of the Grange’…”

“Not much Christmas spirit in the air then?”

“None at all. And we’re not even sure if the three crimes are connected. Well, the DCI was sure about the first two, but he wouldn’t say why.”

“Well, because of the panto,” Joyce replied.

“What about the panto? All of our suspects are saying that the show must go on.”

“But the three attacks all come from the pantomime,” Joyce told him. “In the Great Wraxham Annual Christmas Pantomime, the Giant, his wife, the Huntsman and the Baron conspire to rob the princess of her birthright. Jack tricks the wife into drinking the poisonous brew she wants him to bathe in, then kills the Giant by cutting down the beanstalk. The Baron’s Huntsman chases him, but gets torn apart by…”

“By his own hounds,” Barnaby realised.

“And the Baron is run through in the final duel,” Joyce finished.

“ _That_ ’s what the Guv’nor meant.” Barnaby opened Harp’s notebook. “Look; he wrote here ‘link to P.’; I just didn’t know who P was. And here; ‘if means, also motive’.”

“If the killings all connect to the pantomime, the motive must do as well,” Joyce explained. “And in the pantomime the villains are all killed because they cheated the Princess. So someone feels cheated by the Wickes-Tysons.”

“Someone like the Wickes-Todds perhaps? But DCI Harp?”

“Is the Huntsman; the Baron’s henchman. But who’s the Baron?”

“And who, more importantly, is the killer?” Barnaby reached into his pocket and pulled out a large wallet. “DCI Harp kept all sorts of bits and pieces in here,” he explained. He spilled a pile of papers and old ticket stubs onto the bar. “If we can find…”

They rummaged in the pile for several minutes before Barnaby found what he was looking for. “Oh my God,” he muttered, reaching for his car keys.

“Oh, no!” Joyce warned him. “Not with a pint of that inside you. I’ll drive.”

*

They raced up the slope towards the gamekeeper’s cottage where Simon Mullion lived. As they pulled into the driveway a pale figure darted through the headlights of Joyce’s Fiat.

As soon as Barnaby got out of the car, the bloodied girl threw herself at him. “Please, help me!” Eddie Greenacre begged. “She’s killing him.”

“Look after her!” Barnaby snapped, pushing the girl towards Joyce. 

He ran in through the open front door to discover a scene of horror. Simon Mullion lay on the floor of the hall in a pool of his own blood. His erstwhile fiancée stood over him with a long sword in her hand.

“It was her,” ffiona Tyson whispered. “She did this.”

“It’s alright, ffiona,” Barnaby said softly. “He’s still breathing. Let me call for an ambulance.”

“You don’t understand,” she sobbed.

“Oh, I think I do,” Barnaby assured her. “You did it all for him. He was the wronged princess you were his knight in shining… well…”

“Tights?” ffiona laughed. “But yes; you  _do_  understand.”

Barnaby unfolded the paper he had found in Harp’s wallet; a torn page from an old diary. “You found your great-great-grandfather’s diary. You discovered that it wasn’t him who wrote the play; it was Simon’s great-grandmother.”

“And good-old Charley Wickes screwed Annie Mullion; like my family have been doing to hers ever since. He had her committed to an insane asylum, just to be doubly sure no-one ever believed her. Do you know what his proof of insanity was?”

“No.”

“Having a child out of wedlock;  _his_  child; not that she lived for very long with her mother in the loony-bin.” She turned her dark, haunted eyes on Barnaby. “I just wanted to be the one to give something back; to make things right.”

“And when DCI Harp found out it was you who killed your aunt and uncle, you had to get rid of him.”

She shook her head. “He thought it was Simon! He told me to keep away from Simon.”

“And so of course he had to go as well, as did anyone who got between you and Simon.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“So you used a long, bent metal bar to hook the dog’s food away. It wouldn’t take long for a big, active, aggressive dog like that to become enraged with hunger.” Barnaby fixed ffiona with his gaze. “And all for Simon.”

“Yes.”

“And then he betrayed you.”

“No!” She was appalled. “He  _said_  I was too intense, but I know he never would have left me.  _She_  stole him from me. Don’t you see? That was why  _she_  had to die. But he… he got in the way.” ffiona looked back down at the wounded man at her feet. “And I stabbed him. I… hurt him.”

She looked up at Barnaby.

“No,” he said.

“ _I’m_  the villain,” she realised. She raised the sword, reversed it and brought it stabbing down towards her chest.

*

The ambulances drove the two injured victims and the one who was in shock away. Two police officers went with ffiona Wickes-Tyson to arrest her when she was stable.

“Will she recover?” Joyce asked.

“Physically, yes,” Barnaby replied. “It turns out that it’s actually very hard to stab  _yourself_  with a long sword like that. Mentally… We’ll wait for the expert view.”

“So; she killed her mother because she thought her family had cheated Mullion’s.”

“And her uncle because he was set on continuing the deception and keeping her away from Simon,” Barnaby added.

“I’m not sure I blame them; he was always a bit too smooth.”

“He seems to have done the right thing by Eddie in the end; taking a sword for her.”

“But would she have been in danger without him?” Joyce challenged. “No, Tom; only men think blood and violence is romantic.”

“Then you don’t think there’s a future there?”

Joyce shrugged. “Probably not a very secure one.” She paused for a moment. “If DCI Harp thought that it was Simon, how did you know it was ffiona?”

“You told me that in the pantomime, it’s the princess who is cheated by the villains. Well, that made Simon the princess. Jack had to be someone who loved him.”

Joyce shook her head sadly. “Come on, Tom; I’ll drive you home.”

*

The Fiat pulled up outside a row of brick cottages and Joyce switched off the engine.

“Ah, Joyce,” Barnaby said. “This isn’t my home.”

“No. It’s mine,” she explained. “And it’s as far as I’m going tonight. There’s a spare room; you can use that.” She climbed out of the car, then turned and stuck her head back in. She grinned wickedly and said: “If you’d prefer.”

She turned and headed for the nearest cottage with an exaggerated sway in her step. After a moment, Barnaby sprang out of the car and hurried after her.


End file.
